Migrants and 'Patria'. The imagined community of the radical left in Spain

Abstract

The emergence of inclusive populist parties disputes the social construction of the ‘people’ to the exclusive populism, recently generating new academic debates. Do the new radical left parties have a nationalist character? Are populism and nationalism two inseparable dimensions? Drawing on an original dataset in Spain, this article shows that Podemos’ supporters are significantly less nationalist, expressing more open attitudes towards cultural diversity and immigration, and lower levels of Spanishness than voters from other parties. Arguably, Podemos operates as an antagonistic political option to the traditional positions of the populist radical right (PRR), building an inclusive imagined community around a type of constitutional patriotism or republican populism. These findings contribute to the scholar debate on the relationship of nationalism and populism, bringing to discussion the core values of the supporters of a populist party as a complementary element to its categorization.

A nationalist party with non‐nationalistic voters? Discussing the limits of nationalism in party categorisation

“…A previous study tested similar hypotheses in 24 highly diverse districts in Spain (Lobera, 2020), but this is the first study using representative data of the Spanish population. The sampling design was stratified by region and municipality size.…”

Decentralizing electoral campaigns? New-old parties, grassroots and digital activism

“…A number of contributions have stressed the populist character of left-wing formation Podemos (e.g. Font et al, 2019;Lobera, 2020). Broader scholarship on populism has stressed the central role that social media play in maintaining voters' support for populist candidates (Kriesi, 2014).…”